Rocksteady

What it is

The summer of 1966 in Kingston was famously hot, and the story the musicians tell is that the tempo dropped because nobody could dance to 155 in that weather. Whether or not that is the reason, ska halved in speed almost overnight and everything reorganised around the space that opened up. The horns stepped back and the vocal groups stepped forward. The bass stopped walking and started playing a written figure that repeated every bar or two, which is the single most consequential change in Jamaican music: from here on the bassline is the song. The drummer moved his accent off 2 and 4 and onto beat 3, played as a cross-stick, and the one drop was one small step away.

What it sounds like

Warm, close and vocal-led. Three-part harmony groups over a rhythm section recorded at Treasure Isle with a lot of tape compression and a plate reverb on the voices only. The bass is round and loud with almost no top end, sitting where the kick would sit in a modern mix. Guitar and organ share the offbeat chop, one bright and one dark. The kit is quiet, dry and small: a cross-stick that sounds like a woodblock, hi-hats with the cymbals half-closed, and a bass drum you feel more than hear.

Key elements

• The bass figureA written, repeating line rather than a walk. Jackie Jackson and Lloyd Brevett wrote parts you can hum, and the rest of the arrangement was built to leave room for them.
• Cross-stick on 3The stick laid across the head and struck on the shaft. The backbeat moves from 2 and 4 to beat 3, and reggae drumming starts here.
• The organ bubbleA Hammond or Farfisa playing a rocking figure on the offbeats, one hand slightly behind the other so the chord smears rather than lands.
• Vocal groupsClose three-part harmony in the American soul tradition, with the lead singer often mixed only a little above the other two.
• SpaceHalf the tempo and roughly the same number of parts means every element is audible individually. This is what made dub possible five years later.

How to get them

• BassWrite the line first and build everything else around it. Low-pass around 800Hz, compress it hard with a slow attack, and keep it dead centre. Play slightly ahead of the grid on the first note of each bar.
• Cross-stickA side stick sample, high-passed at 400Hz, very short, with a touch of room and no plate. It should read as wood, not as a snare drum turned down.
• OrganDrawbars set low and full, a slow Leslie, and chords on the offbeat eighths. Play the top note a fraction late by hand rather than quantising it.
• GuitarSame offbeat as the organ but muted much shorter, panned opposite, and rolled off below 300Hz so the two parts occupy different halves of the midrange.
• TapePrint the whole mix through a tape emulation at around minus three on the meters. Rocksteady's softness is a machine artefact, not an EQ move.
• Swing57 percent. Still audibly shuffled, because these are the same drummers who were playing ska eighteen months earlier and the feel had not left their hands yet.

Reference points

Alton Ellis, Hopeton Lewis, The Paragons, The Techniques, Lynn Taitt and the Jets, Duke Reid at Treasure Isle. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.